


How to Breathe

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 10:00:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4783208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s no point in learning it at all if he doesn’t learn it the right way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How to Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> happy nijihimu day

“Shuu, will you teach me karate?”

“Teach you?”

“Yeah,” says Tatsuya.

He’s already picked up some of Shuu’s technique from the few times they’ve fought together, but it always feels weird when he’s kicking like that and he’s got no idea if he’s doing it the right way. And that’s still only a small fraction of what Shuu knows, and not even all of what Shuu’s done in front of him (some of which he’s figured out how to block but isn’t quite sure how he’d approach doing it himself); he’s only drawn a little bit from the well on top of the aquifer of Shuu’s knowledge.

“Well,” says Shuu. “I’d have to show you how to breathe first.”

There’s always been something about the way Shuu breathes—at rest, or even when he’s playing basketball or fighting, that’s still somehow grounded and calm, even when he seems thrown off. It’s like he’s got this immovable baseline that he always stays in touch with. Tatsuya’s never really thought about where the technique came from before but that sort of steadiness is consistent with what little he knows about martial arts. And as much as he’d like to learn how to kick and punch and dodge right now, there’s no point in learning it at all if he doesn’t learn it the right way.

He nods. “Show me.”

“Okay. Stand up,” says Shuu.

They both rise to their feet, unsticking themselves from the blacktop at the same time; Tatsuya places the basketball he’d been holding in his lap on the ground leaning against the fence. Shuu studies him for a minute, looking his body up and down.

“Relax your posture. Don’t stand up so straight.”

Tatsuya tries to do as he’s told, letting himself slump just a little bit, giving himself a little bit of slack to work with.

“No. A little more.”

Shuu reaches over, placing his hand on Tatsuya’s shoulder.

“There’s still a lot of tension. Try and get as much out of it as you can. Drop your shoulders a little more.”

He lets them sink; it feels more than a little strange. He rolls his shoulders back a few times; Shuu nods in approval. It’s hard to stop doing everything that’s been hammered into his head about standing up straight, every way he’s tried to make himself seem just a little bit taller and fuller for so many years. And it’s not about just slumping over; it’s a very delicate medium that he’s not used to exploring to such a fine degree. Which of course, isn’t an excuse—it’s just another roadblock he has to slip through somehow. And with Shuu’s hands doing the adjustments that he can’t see, it’s a bit easier.

“Okay,” says Shuu. “Now if you want to breathe, you have to let the air go into your abdomen. That’s what should be rising and falling, not your chest. Here, feel it on me.”

Tatsuya places his hand on Shuu’s abdomen; sweat is soaking through his t-shirt. Shuu’s skin reflexively ripples under Tatsuya’s touch like a surface of water hit by a raindrop. Shuu breathes; his abdomen swells like a wave far out at sea, and then contracts. Again and again it happens in a steady beat, a silent metronome.

“You try,” Shuu says.

Tatsuya removes his hand, placing it on top of his own stomach. He breathes in.

“Try to imagine there’s something sucking your breath down deeper. Like there’s a balloon between your hips that needs to fill up.”

Tatsuya tries, once, twice—his chest still rises more than his abdomen, and even though he tries to concentrate more the second time there’s no noticeable improvement.

“Relax,” says Shuu.

He puts his hand on top of Tatsuya’s; Tatsuya tries to center himself more, to focus on the image of the imaginary balloon again. It still doesn’t feel any different to him after a couple of breaths, but Shuu nods.

“You’re getting it. It doesn’t feel any different, right?”

Tatsuya shakes his head.

“Yeah,” Shuu says with a grin. “It’s because you’re relaxing. It’s good. But here, feel again.”

He moves Tatsuya’s hand back over to his stomach.

And bit by bit, Tatsuya starts to feel a difference—it’s not much of one, and it’s so hard not to be impatient with it when his progress is this slow (but he reminds himself that that would get him even farther from the goal). So he doubles down the concentration, tells himself that he has the self-discipline for this. And it becomes as if they’re in a small center of focus, that their rhythmic breaths and softly-uttered words are louder than thunder, until they let the focus drop and the sound around them comes rushing back.

Kids are shoving at each other and shouting now down near the far basket; they’re not alone on the court anymore. The sun is climbing higher in the sky, pushing itself up to be stronger and stronger as it beats down on them. It’s only a matter of time before one of them gets hit by a basketball or someone asks them to leave.

“We should go,” Tatsuya says.

One of the children fails on an attempted layup; no one grabs the rebound but it doesn’t roll very far. Shuu nods.

“You’ve made good progress. It’s a lot for your first day.”

“It’s because I have such a good teacher,” says Tatsuya.

Shuu’s hand is still on Tatsuya’s abdomen; he slides it over to his waist as he leans over to kiss him. He tastes like sweat and honey, salty and sweet and full of breath.

* * *

 

He’s exhausted but he can’t sleep; after spilling almost everything like a glass cup smashed against a corner of granite counter out to Alex and after everything that’s happened today all he wants to do is burrow into the blankets like a crab in the sand and wait for things to blow over enough to set himself back up again. And as he’s trying to re-center himself the way Shuu had taught him, murmuring instructions while what parts of their skin that weren’t touching were separated by at most a few inches, he realizes that in the midst all this he’s forgotten to breathe right. His breathing’s been ragged and up in his chest, gasped through his mouth—under the circumstances, he supposes that there’s no way he could have maintained it the whole way. But he hasn’t returned to the right way even after everything; even now his chest is pushing against the blanket with each breath he takes.

So he tries to focus on Shuu’s words, his methodology, the way he’d talked about balloons inflating, the way he’d held his hand against Tatsuya’s abdomen. He half-wishes Shuu was here, that he could feel Shuu’s hand instead of just his own—but he’d rather not have Shuu see him like this, and besides it’s not worth thinking about impossible things. He steadies himself; even feeling this bad it’s not that hard to get back, and in the process of centering himself he loosens the bonds of wakefulness feeding on the tension in his body and finally falls asleep.

* * *

 

He’s missed cooking for other people. At school the dorm kitchens are shit and the cafeteria food is excellent and while Tatsuya’s sure he could get people to eat what he makes it just seems altogether unnecessary. But here he can cook dinner for Shuu’s entire family in their fancy renovated kitchen with a six-burner gas stove and a fume hood high enough he’s not going to bump his head on the corner and Shuu’s family to cook for. And he’s doing it a bit for the gratification (he knows Shuu’s mother is always exhausted between work and the hospital and Shuu hates cooking alone and his siblings are still too young) but also just because he enjoys it.

And he enjoys having Shuu with him while he cooks. Even if his movements are constrained by Shuu’s arms around his waist and Shuu’s chin tucked around his shoulder, he can relax and chop peppers at almost his usual rhythm. And he can have Shuu tasting out of his hand—he misestimates the last few chops, ending up with a piece just too thin to cut in two but clearly bigger than all the others. He reaches up to place it in Shuu’s mouth; Shuu’s lips are soft around his fingertips like plush.

“Thank you,” Shuu says when he’s done; Tatsuya feels the vibrations of his voice on his upper back like lying half-asleep in bed when a train rolls by underground, pleasant and familiar and comfortable.

Tatsuya begins on the next pepper.

“You’re breathing,” says Shuu.

“I’m alive,” says Tatsuya.

Shuu pinches his hip. “You know what I mean. You’re doing it right.”

Tatsuya smiles and looks up; Shuu can see it in the reflection in the cabinet door. He kisses Tatsuya’s neck, warm and wet. Tatsuya looks back down at the cutting board but he doesn’t try to keep the smile off his face.


End file.
